The European Commission identified empirica as key innovator for Optimisation and Creation in the project SMARTSPACES. The EU’s Innovation Radar platform has been publically launched on 10 April 2018, at the Digital Day 2018 in Brussels, attended by Ministers and Members of the European Parliament, the European Commission.

empirica has been identified as a ‘key innovator’ and awarded the following innovation titles:

• Analysis Approach for the development and provision of ICT-based services for energy efficiency Innovation Category: Optimisation (this category is reserved for 10% of nominated projects)
• Online Guide allowing replication and implementation of ICT-based energy efficiency services Innovation Category: Creation (this category is reserved for 20% of nominated projects)

In addition, pilot site Bristol was nominated for Commitment on “Low Cost Energy Efficiency Service addressed to municipalities deploying smart-metering”. The Innovation Radar platform builds on the information and data gathered by independent experts involved in reviewing ongoing projects funded by H2020, FP7 or CIP. These experts also provided an independent view regarding the innovations in the projects and their market potential (more information about the Innovation Radar methodology is available here).

SMARTSPACES has been already named a “Project to Watch” as an innovative energy reduction project by the United Nations’ Big Data Climate Challenge. The Big Data Climate Challenge, hosted by UN Global Pulse and the Secretary-General’s Climate Change Support Team, aims to unearth data-driven climate solutions and evidence of the economic dimensions of climate change. SMARTSPACES was also named the lead project for all 17 CIP projects and hosts the common evaluation tool and methodology eeMeasure continuously recommended as a basis for all Horizon 2020 projects.

The SMARTSPACES service enables public authorities in Europe to significantly improve their management of energy in the buildings they occupy. This extends to making energy consumption of public buildings known to everybody and improving energy behaviour of staff and students. The implementation of operational services includes 11 pilot sites with almost 700 buildings in 8 countries (United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Turkey, Serbia) with almost 20,000 professionals and staff users and reaching more than 6,000,000 visitors annually.

Most SMARTSPACES stakeholders achieved financial pay-off during the first 3 years and by almost all stakeholders after ten years. The socio-economic net benefit for the SMARTSPACES project: applying the worst case scenario, extrapolated for ten years: amounts to €4.2Million in pilot buildings alone. Additional benefits arise where grid interaction are taking place (e.g. peak load reductions or increased self-consumption potential as soon as legally possible).